When they say "you can't separate" the two, that's absolutely not in reference to sidechains or other similar schemes.

Quote from: Sidechains white paper

In this paper, we argue that it is possible to simultaneously achieve these seemingly contradictory goals. The core observation is that“Bitcoin” the blockchain is conceptually independent from “bitcoin” the asset

This is absolutely not the argument we are having. These guys are referring to idiots and mainstream journalists who argue you can have the blockchain without the bitcoin.

When they say "you can't separate" the two, that's absolutely not in reference to sidechains or other similar schemes.

In fact, you can bet these guys are pretty excited about sidechains.

i doubt it. we've already established these asset SC's will be speculative and therefore different ledgers. no one quite gets that yet. and they don't get that these distractions will deprecate Bitcoins primary function, that being the disruption of money.

Blockstream won't even release a business plan outlining exactly how they plan to make money. once they do, i think everything will become quite clear.

Go read through his posts. He was a pragmatist. I really don't think he considered a significant degree of consolidation to be a systemic problem. He may not of considered it ideal, but he probably (correctly, in my opinion) considered it both inevitable and non-fatal.

I'd characterize him as pragmatic, rather than a pragmatist.Sure, mining centralization was anticipated, but not inevitable.It is non-fatal to the extent the BGP solution addresses it, which it does pretty well, but not perfectly.

When they say "you can't separate" the two, that's absolutely not in reference to sidechains or other similar schemes.

Quote from: Sidechains white paper

In this paper, we argue that it is possible to simultaneously achieve these seemingly contradictory goals. The core observation is that“Bitcoin” the blockchain is conceptually independent from “bitcoin” the asset

This is absolutely not the argument we are having. These guys are referring to idiots and mainstream journalists who argue you can have the blockchain without the bitcoin.

When they say "you can't separate" the two, that's absolutely not in reference to sidechains or other similar schemes.

In fact, you can bet these guys are pretty excited about sidechains.

i doubt it. we've already established these asset SC's will be speculative and therefore different ledgers. no one quite gets that yet. and they don't get that these distractions will deprecate Bitcoins primary function, that being the disruption of money.

Blockstream won't even release a business plan outlining exactly how they plan to make money. once they do, i think everything will become quite clear.

Absolutely not. You are the only one obsessed with these speculative SC's. Everyone else recognize the utility and potential of distributing the Bitcoin ledger on different chains with different utility.

It's not that "no one gets it". It's quite simply that your assumptions are wrong.

"I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash." Hal Finney, Dec. 2010

i'm glad everyone's been talking about Satoshi recently. that stimulated me to go back thru his whitepaper to see if there were any references to any of the speculative SC's functions that are being proposed by the SC proponents in this thread and elsewhere. those being listed below. they claim that SC's are a "natural and logical extension" to Bitcoin and that if Satoshi was able to be asked, he would love SC's. well, i see no indication that this wild claim is valid. see that none of these speculative assets were ever mentioned:

it's clear to me that Satoshi intended for Bitcoin to be a new form of digital money, or currency if you will, that mimicked gold in all respects and improved upon it. i'm only aware of one isolated forum post where he mentioned the addition of smart contracts, etc but that was in the context of adding them to the MC protocol. never was there any mention of SC's nor the quack idea of separating the BTC units from the blockchain. and understandably so. by breaking the inextricable link btwn the two, you break security and therefore break Bitcoin as Money. this is so obvious. the last 200 pages have clearly demonstrated a myriad of ways things can go wrong with the SC proponents morphing their vision of how SC's will play out to satisfy any specific concern while promising us the moon.

Bitcoin should continue to focus on what got us to where we are: the Money function. that is where the problem lies today in the world of fiat and central banks. this is what i saw back in January of 2011, Bitcoin as a poison dart aimed at the heart of central banks. the problem is not stocks, bonds, insurance, contracts. those all function reasonably well. the problems we've had with them in the past, such as in 2001 and 2008, were fiat printing enabled and backed by central banks. w/o the ability to print at will to bail out bad actors, Bitcoin as Money seeks to clamp down and eliminate this moral hazard. and the network of money is ripe to be disrupted. and rightfully so. THAT is where the money is. the Forex is the biggest in the world as i've shown. the gold market is huge as well. if Bitcoin can crack those markets we will go to the Moon. Bitcoin should stay simple and non complex. it has evolved to that of a public good. no one should be allowed to corrupt its primary function of money. let alone profit off it.

Colored coins are inherently used for tracking things outside the blockchain - that by definition means representing obligations a.k.a counterparty risk. Any technique that tracks obligations outside the blockchain will be tracking counterparty risk.

But none of that has nothing to do with the underlying technology used to create the token. Colored coins as tokens are no different from other bitcoins. A colored coin token doesn't all of a sudden become less trustworthy than a non-colored Bitcoin.

I define "another layer of trust" as trusting anything else but the Bitcoin network.

In that regard colored coins are less decentralized than sidechains.

I don't get sidechains. Will they just be alt-coins then?

Sidechains have two models. They are effectively an alt-chain that is supported by the BTC unit on a 1:1 peg.*

In the proposed concept, they use a SPV client to settle between chains. To secure the chain they would use merged-mining which potentially lets them access 100% of Bitcoin's mining power. They are not quite as secure though as they are not accepted by all nodes.

They can also use a less-decentralized model that rely on Oracles/Federations/Voting Pools.

*the unit is technically not the actual BTC but an image of it locked in a multi-sig type of way. the peg could also be a deterministic function but that defeats the purpose and effectively creates an altcoin.

Is there a new innovation in merged mining that adds some security?

The security for merged mined side chains is more likely to be based on good will, than merged mining. The "can't be evil" requirement is really the critical element. (Our collective effort to maintain the non-evil is the guiding principle of this topic.)Everyone has to pretty much love the SC like a precious offspring, for it to survive, if it is merge mined. Otherwise merge.mine.capability will more likely kill it rather than secure it.

by breaking the inextricable link btwn the two, you break security and therefore break Bitcoin as Money.

Bitcoin should continue to focus on what got us to where we are: the Money function. that is where the problem lies today in the world of fiat and central banks. this is what i saw back in January of 2011, Bitcoin as a poison dart aimed at the heart of central banks. the problem is not stocks, bonds, insurance, contracts. those all function reasonably well. the problems we've had with them in the past, such as in 2001 and 2008, were fiat printing enabled and backed by central banks. w/o the ability to print at will to bail out bad actors, Bitcoin as Money seeks to clamp down and eliminate this moral hazard. and the network of money is ripe to be disrupted. and rightfully so. THAT is where the money is. the Forex is the biggest in the world as i've shown. the gold market is huge as well. if Bitcoin can crack those markets we will go to the Moon. Bitcoin should stay simple and non complex. it has evolved to that of a public good. no one should be allowed to corrupt its primary function of money. let alone profit off it.

leave the source code alone.

Persistingly wrong.

How many times and how many people need to point out the fallacy in your argument for you to finally understand that sidechain DO NOT inherently, "break Bitcoin as Money"?

When are you going to address the fact that any centralized off-chain solution is considerably more dangerous to Bitcoin as Money than sidechains are?

Are you going to admit that SPVP proof is just another verification model by which the allocation of coins to other chains is potentially safer and more decentralized than current solutions that exist?

The Bitcoin money is its ledger. Sidechains are effectively the most secure way to accomodate any transactions that can not be processed on the mainchain while preserving the integrity of the ledger.

If you are honestly worried about corruption of Bitcoin as Money, centralized off-chain solutions should be the biggest of your concerns.

"I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash." Hal Finney, Dec. 2010

I agree with you on this issue cypher but my problem is... If you don't want these side chains to exist, why is it that you are also so against alt coins that enable features that you do not wish Bitcoin to support?

Colored coins are inherently used for tracking things outside the blockchain - that by definition means representing obligations a.k.a counterparty risk. Any technique that tracks obligations outside the blockchain will be tracking counterparty risk.

But none of that has nothing to do with the underlying technology used to create the token. Colored coins as tokens are no different from other bitcoins. A colored coin token doesn't all of a sudden become less trustworthy than a non-colored Bitcoin.

I define "another layer of trust" as trusting anything else but the Bitcoin network.

In that regard colored coins are less decentralized than sidechains.

I don't get sidechains. Will they just be alt-coins then?

Sidechains have two models. They are effectively an alt-chain that is supported by the BTC unit on a 1:1 peg.*

In the proposed concept, they use a SPV client to settle between chains. To secure the chain they would use merged-mining which potentially lets them access 100% of Bitcoin's mining power. They are not quite as secure though as they are not accepted by all nodes.

They can also use a less-decentralized model that rely on Oracles/Federations/Voting Pools.

*the unit is technically not the actual BTC but an image of it locked in a multi-sig type of way. the peg could also be a deterministic function but that defeats the purpose and effectively creates an altcoin.

Is there a new innovation in merged mining that adds some security?

The security for merged mined side chains is more likely to be based on good will, than merged mining. The "can't be evil" requirement is really the critical element. (Our collective effort to maintain the non-evil is the guiding principle of this topic.)Everyone has to pretty much love the SC like a precious offspring, for it to survive, if it is merge mined. Otherwise merge.mine.capability will more likely kill it rather than secure it.

I agree, which goes with my argument that not many SCs will access or even consider using this security model. Though there are certainly use cases that could command and obtain this kind of adoption.

This makes cypherdoc's delusion about SPVP even more irrelevant considering there is a high probability that a good majority of sidechains will use federated models.

"I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash." Hal Finney, Dec. 2010

by breaking the inextricable link btwn the two, you break security and therefore break Bitcoin as Money.

Bitcoin should continue to focus on what got us to where we are: the Money function. that is where the problem lies today in the world of fiat and central banks. this is what i saw back in January of 2011, Bitcoin as a poison dart aimed at the heart of central banks. the problem is not stocks, bonds, insurance, contracts. those all function reasonably well. the problems we've had with them in the past, such as in 2001 and 2008, were fiat printing enabled and backed by central banks. w/o the ability to print at will to bail out bad actors, Bitcoin as Money seeks to clamp down and eliminate this moral hazard. and the network of money is ripe to be disrupted. and rightfully so. THAT is where the money is. the Forex is the biggest in the world as i've shown. the gold market is huge as well. if Bitcoin can crack those markets we will go to the Moon. Bitcoin should stay simple and non complex. it has evolved to that of a public good. no one should be allowed to corrupt its primary function of money. let alone profit off it.

leave the source code alone.

Persistingly wrong.

How many times and how many people need to point out the fallacy in your argument for you to finally understand that sidechain DO NOT inherently, "break Bitcoin as Money"?

When are you going to address the fact that any centralized off-chain solution is considerably more dangerous to Bitcoin as Money than sidechains are?

Are you going to admit that SPVP proof is just another verification model by which the allocation of coins to other chains is potentially safer and more decentralized than current solutions that exist?

The Bitcoin money is its ledger. Sidechains are effectively the most secure way to accomodate any transactions that can not be processed on the mainchain while preserving the integrity of the ledger.

If you are honestly worried about corruption of Bitcoin as Money, centralized off-chain solutions should be the biggest of your concerns.

why should i admit that centralized offchain solutions are dangerous to Bitcoin? based on what evidence? Gox? Bitcoinica?

c'mon, that would be to neglect the greater understanding that has been achieved by such unfortunate events. it is growing up. do you expect perfect behavior from children? Bitcoin is inherently a p2p money and encourages us as individuals to take greater responsibility for our money. those hard lessons have gone a long way towards strengthening Bitcoin, not endangering Bitcoin. look at all the improved security measures that have grown out of those events. we "need" those events to teach us how to interact with Bitcoin and further strengthen it. SC's are an excuse to not deal with these hard problems esp when it comes to MC development. instead of Blockstream breaking off with 40% of core devs + 3 top committers in a bid to make $millions/billions, why don't those guys work with Gavin to implement MC improvements? or if they insist on attempting to make $millions/billions off of Bitcoin, at least step down and allow some non-conflicted core devs to take over. or reorg as a non profit.

Blockstream is just another for profit company that was established at the beginning of the year and is jockeying to modify the core protocol to its advantage so as to give them an edge over other companies or products like CP, Bitshares, Mastercoin, etc.

I agree with you on this issue cypher but my problem is... If you don't want these side chains to exist, why is it that you are also so against alt coins that enable features that you do not wish Bitcoin to support?

i'm against them only in the sense that i think they will die competing with Bitcoin so the sooner everyone comes to that understanding the better. but i understand that they want to compete head to head and speculators will always try to make a buck so who am i to argue with that as long as they are competing fairly and not trying to alter Bitcoin source code to their advantage.

I wonder if there isn't some kind of compromise possible. I really try to think of Bitcoin as an ecosystem and alternate currencies as parasites, predators, and food. Here's a thought. First create a Proof of Burn independent altcoin. You will need Bitcoin investors to back the asset. Then after a period of time elapses it is able to be converted to a Side Chain after which the currency can be swapped for new bitcoins only every so many arbitrary Bitcoin blocks. This way they kind of have to stand on their own and can't bleed Bitcoin too much.

Any significantly advanced cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from Ponzi Tulips.

I agree with you on this issue cypher but my problem is... If you don't want these side chains to exist, why is it that you are also so against alt coins that enable features that you do not wish Bitcoin to support?

i'm against them only in the sense that i think they will die competing with Bitcoin so the sooner everyone comes to that understanding the better. but i understand that they want to compete head to head and speculators will always try to make a buck so who am i to argue with that as long as they are competing fairly and not trying to alter Bitcoin source code to their advantage.

But many of them are not competing directly with bitcoin as sound money, they are providing other distinct features that bitcoin is unwilling to match, that you do not wish it to match, in it's quest to provide said money. How is it that all those useful features will just "die" when bitcoin is not willing or unable to provide equal features?

First, an introduction to the technical strategies at hand. In general, there are three approaches to creating a new crypto protocol:

Build on Bitcoin the blockchain, but not Bitcoin the currency (metacoins, eg. most features of Counterparty) Build on Bitcoin the currency, but not Bitcoin the blockchain (sidechains) Create a completely standalone platform

When discussing currency network effects, he completely missed the big one: the network effect of the ledger. He talked about network effects of currency, but not about store of value.

This whole Bitcoin thing has been about getting yourself on the universal ledger of civilization. That is why people invest. That is why people support it. That is why it's a big deal. Yet it's like he has no idea that is even a thing. He's fallen for the subtle confusion that Bitcoin is a "currency," when the reality is that Bitcoin avoids the need for currency in the first place since it's a direct ledger.

The closest he came is this part:

Quote

Unit of account network effect (very large currencies become units of account, leading to more purchasing power stability via price stickiness as well as higher salience) – unfortunately, Bitcoin will likely never be stable enough to trigger this effect; the best empirical evidence we can see for this is likely the valuation history of gold.

But this isn't really the same thing as store of value - the idea that arises in society that "we will use this ledger (or a commodity substitute) to keep track of debts from now on, by convention."

This is why the ledger concept really has to be understood, and understood on the deepest level, to avoid falling into silliness of various kinds. It's impossible to fully understand Bitcoin if you continue to think of it at as a currency rather than as a ledger, and this is just one more example.

First, an introduction to the technical strategies at hand. In general, there are three approaches to creating a new crypto protocol:

Build on Bitcoin the blockchain, but not Bitcoin the currency (metacoins, eg. most features of Counterparty) Build on Bitcoin the currency, but not Bitcoin the blockchain (sidechains) Create a completely standalone platform

When discussing currency network effects, he completely missed the big one: the network effect of the ledger. He talked about network effects of currency, but not about store of value.

This whole Bitcoin thing has been about getting yourself on the universal ledger of civilization. That is why people invest. That is why people support it. That is why it's a big deal. It's like he has no idea that is even a thing.

The closest he came is this part:

Quote

Unit of account network effect (very large currencies become units of account, leading to more purchasing power stability via price stickiness as well as higher salience) – unfortunately, Bitcoin will likely never be stable enough to trigger this effect; the best empirical evidence we can see for this is likely the valuation history of gold.

But this isn't really the same thing as store of value - the idea that arises in society that "we will use this ledger (or a commodity substitute) to keep track of debts from now on, by convention."

This is why the ledger concept really has to be understood, and understood on the deepest level, to avoid falling into silliness of various kinds.

the integrity of the ledger depends on the currency unit riding on it. the greed to obtain the unit is what drives the mining incentive. w/o the unit, the ledger dies. which is why allowing the units an offramp to an unrelated speculative SC will kill Bitcoin.

brg444 continues to morph his argument by alternating his cheerleading of these speculative SC's btwn, "we don't need or want them, just utility chains" to "we should want to incorporate speculative assets into SC's to grow the economy and diversify. decentralize all the things!"

but i say that the main goal of the spvp is to create speculative SC's; i have $21M in Blockstream investment that says i'm right.

I agree with you on this issue cypher but my problem is... If you don't want these side chains to exist, why is it that you are also so against alt coins that enable features that you do not wish Bitcoin to support?

i'm against them only in the sense that i think they will die competing with Bitcoin so the sooner everyone comes to that understanding the better. but i understand that they want to compete head to head and speculators will always try to make a buck so who am i to argue with that as long as they are competing fairly and not trying to alter Bitcoin source code to their advantage.

But many of them are not competing directly with bitcoin as sound money, they are providing other distinct features that bitcoin is unwilling to match, that you do not wish it to match, in it's quest to provide said money. How is it that all those useful features will just "die" when bitcoin is not willing or unable to provide equal features?

by breaking the inextricable link btwn the two, you break security and therefore break Bitcoin as Money.

Bitcoin should continue to focus on what got us to where we are: the Money function. that is where the problem lies today in the world of fiat and central banks. this is what i saw back in January of 2011, Bitcoin as a poison dart aimed at the heart of central banks. the problem is not stocks, bonds, insurance, contracts. those all function reasonably well. the problems we've had with them in the past, such as in 2001 and 2008, were fiat printing enabled and backed by central banks. w/o the ability to print at will to bail out bad actors, Bitcoin as Money seeks to clamp down and eliminate this moral hazard. and the network of money is ripe to be disrupted. and rightfully so. THAT is where the money is. the Forex is the biggest in the world as i've shown. the gold market is huge as well. if Bitcoin can crack those markets we will go to the Moon. Bitcoin should stay simple and non complex. it has evolved to that of a public good. no one should be allowed to corrupt its primary function of money. let alone profit off it.

leave the source code alone.

Persistingly wrong.

How many times and how many people need to point out the fallacy in your argument for you to finally understand that sidechain DO NOT inherently, "break Bitcoin as Money"?

When are you going to address the fact that any centralized off-chain solution is considerably more dangerous to Bitcoin as Money than sidechains are?

Are you going to admit that SPVP proof is just another verification model by which the allocation of coins to other chains is potentially safer and more decentralized than current solutions that exist?

The Bitcoin money is its ledger. Sidechains are effectively the most secure way to accomodate any transactions that can not be processed on the mainchain while preserving the integrity of the ledger.

If you are honestly worried about corruption of Bitcoin as Money, centralized off-chain solutions should be the biggest of your concerns.

why should i admit that centralized offchain solutions are dangerous to Bitcoin? based on what evidence? Gox? Bitcoinica?

c'mon, that would be to neglect the greater understanding that has been achieved by such unfortunate events. it is growing up. do you expect perfect behavior from children? Bitcoin is inherently a p2p money and encourages us as individuals to take greater responsibility for our money. those hard lessons have gone a long way towards strengthening Bitcoin, not endangering Bitcoin. look at all the improved security measures that have grown out of those events. we "need" those events to teach us how to interact with Bitcoin and further strengthen it. SC's are an excuse to not deal with these hard problems esp when it comes to MC development. instead of Blockstream breaking off with 40% of core devs + 3 top committers in a bid to make $millions/billions, why don't those guys work with Gavin to implement MC improvements? or if they insist on attempting to make $millions/billions off of Bitcoin, at least step down and allow some non-conflicted core devs to take over. or reorg as a non profit.

Blockstream is just another for profit company that was established at the beginning of the year and is jockeying to modify the core protocol to its advantage so as to give them an edge over other companies or products like CP, Bitshares, Mastercoin, etc.

What an hypocrite.

Do I understand that SCs can not benefit also from this "educational" process?

You are really trying to write-off Gox as irrelevant when nearly a year later we still hear about constantly from mainstream media. Are you suggesting this had no impact on Bitcoin's reputation?

What I want you to admit is these offchain solutions are inherently more dangerous to the integrity of the Bitcoin ledger (Sound Money) than any form of sidechains.

we "need" those events to teach us how to interact with Bitcoin and further strengthen it.

And that's exactly what sidechains propose.

Note that when speaking of sidechains I am also referring to federated models.

I am going to repeat this ad nauseam until you get it : Blockstream's business model is not dependent on SPVP and its core integration and neither is this proposition conferring them any advantage whatsoever considering its neutral, open source nature.

You are as stubborn as a mule...

"I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash." Hal Finney, Dec. 2010